Artificial intelligence answering patients' questions, home medical labs, prescription health apps and secondary use of health data - several new technologies in healthcare herald important changes in the health sector in 2023.
The daily problems faced by medical staff, healthcare facilities and patients are not conducive to discussions about global digital trends. Health care is chronically underfunded and one gets the impression that digital transformation boils down at most to e-prescription or EDM, the implementation of which is delayed.
However, socio-technological trends are developing in their own track and absorbing more spheres of life. Mobile phones and wearable devices monitor the state of health, many tests can already be carried out at home (just think of the recent high-profile Combo tests), and patients do not always have to go to hospital because they can be treated remotely. The Polish Ministry of Health is also testing innovations that could be applied on a large scale.
Here are some of the most important trends that are developing rapidly and could shake up the health market.
Medical ChatGPT
Artificial intelligence has been talked about for a long time, but this year will be a landmark year for AI. At the end of 2022, OpenAI has released ChatGPT. It is about a chatbot using machine learning and big data. ChatGPT enables natural conversations with a machine. The AI system can be asked literally anything, even about writing a poem or a scientific paper. The style is so close to that of human speech that it is sometimes difficult to guess that the text was written by algorithms.
AI can already be asked to generate photos, videos and music. In February 2023, Google will join the AI race by presenting its new Chat Bart. To illustrate the capabilities of ChatGPT, it suffices to mention that it passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination in January 2023, answering 60 per cent of the questions correctly.
There is already a medical version of ChatGPT developed by Google and DeepMind.
It is called Med-PaLM and can answer questions about symptoms or treatment. Unlike Google's search engine based on the popularity of entries on the Internet, Med-PaLM only uses medical knowledge. It can be expected that chatbots based on natural language processing models will soon answer health-related questions from patients and allow doctors to consult their decisions. Another application will also be to analyse data in the EDM and collate it with medical knowledge - the doctor will simply be able to ask the AI to search for specific data, instead of wasting time clicking around.
Artificial intelligence in health assessment is also nothing exotic in Poland. It has already been used during the pandemic to assess symptoms and on a test basis on the First Contact Teleplatform as a digital triage (AI solution of the Polish start-up Infermedica).
Virtual branches
The UK National Health Service (NHS) has announced an increase in virtual wards by 500%. This is in response to the NHS crisis - queues are getting longer and longer, while new monitoring technology allows patients to be treated in their homes.
Virtual wards, or virtual hospitals, are a model of care in which - when possible - the patient remains at home. The medical facility has mobile care teams, consisting of a nurse and/or doctor, who visit the patient regularly. The patient remains under constant supervision using telemedicine devices. In Poland, too, we already have examples of virtual wards under the umbrella of Home Medical Care (DOM). During the pandemic, COVID-19 patients with a stable course were given a pulse oximeter by the NFZ, sending their measurements and reporting their condition.
Virtual care
Patients who were forced to use telepresence during the COVID-19 pandemic got used to it and even liked it. Who would have expected it - before 2029, scepticism about telemedicine was prevalent.
Medical facilities have invested in equipment and IT systems and doctors are increasingly willing to provide virtual advice, especially since they can issue e-prescription, e-ZLA or e-referral. As the pandemic has faded, the number of teleconsultations has decreased, but remains at a consistently high level.
According to Deloitte's new report Health Care Outlook 2023, telecare will be one of the strongest trends. On the one hand, it is a convenience for the patient, on the other hand, it is a necessity for any health care system: shortages of medical staff are becoming more acute, the costs of care are rising and disproportionately to the results of treatment, queues to specialists are lengthening.
Telecare is intended to provide equal access to medical services at any time of the day or night, regardless of where you live. For now, teleconsultation is simply a copy of a visit to the doctor's surgery, but with the popularisation of e-health technologies (smart watches and home diagnostic technologies), the doctor will obtain many test results at a glance during an online call.
Home sensors
Smartphones and smart watches measure sports activity, sleep quality, blood pressure. Among others, blood glucose measurement without pricking is in the queue, something that new technology giants including Apple are working on.
More and more advanced medical tests can be performed at home. In January 2023 at CES 2023, Withings - a company known for making smart scales and watches - unveiled the world's first home urine lab. The U-Scan is placed in the toilet in the same way as a toilet cube. For now, it measures three parameters (LH concentration, PH and specific gravity), but the manufacturer has already announced further tests and certification of the innovation as a medical device. This means that patients with certain chronic diseases will be able to test their urine daily at home, without having to travel to a laboratory. The U-Scan device will be available later this year for €499.95. It recognises the urine of the household member and resets itself after every toilet flush. There is no need for urine test containers and no redness when giving a sample in the laboratory.
In an interesting twist - researchers at Stanford University have recently developed a method of measuring blood parameters, and from just one drop. Next in line will be home blood tests, as easy as pricking your finger to test your glucose levels.
The Polish MZ is also testing various technologies for health monitoring. In addition to the aforementioned pulse oximeters, pilots of e-spirometers have already taken place, and one of the most recent programmes is SmartDoktor - monitoring children and adolescents with immune deficiencies.
Prescription applications
Instead of a prescription for a drug, the patient receives a prescription for a mobile health app designed to facilitate health management and lifestyle changes. Such a solution is already in place in Belgium and Germany. And from spring 2023, it is to be introduced in France.
Digital therapies (DTx) are a new form of medicine that is expected to be particularly effective in the treatment of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and certain mental illnesses such as anxiety or mild depression. Some of these can be successfully treated by changing behaviour or exercising regularly. How? This is the task of the application, which selects an individual therapeutic or preventive plan, guides the patient through its successive stages and monitors progress. The efficacy of DTx is proven in clinical trials, so these are medical devices, not mere apps. In the German model, prescriptions for DTx are reimbursed.
In January 2023, the EIT Health report 'Towards a harmonised EU landscape for digital health' appeared with recommendations for the European Commission. Its aim is to introduce a common regulation of DTx across Europe, so that apps that pass certification in one country can be recommended by doctors in the rest of the EU, without the need for re-certification.
In Poland, DTx is tentatively mentioned by the Centre for eHealth. In autumn 2022, the Ministry of Health announced the first step - the introduction of the 'MZ Certified Application' label awarded in the validation process of digital solutions. For now, the MZ has not provided details of this project.
Data spaces
In May 2022, we learned about the principles of the so-called European Health Data Spaces (EHDS). The aim is to facilitate the cross-border exchange of patient data within the EU (e-prescriptions and medical record summaries) and the secondary processing of health data for, among other things, the development of new e-health solutions and research. The EU budget for 2023 (EU4Health programme) allocates €26 million for the EHDS.
The European Commission has ambitions for the programme to come into force in 2025. In practice, this means the creation of national data hubs connected within a single European network. The data collected in the hubs is, for example, anonymised data from electronic medical records, clinical trials and so on. They will be available for use by pharmaceutical companies for the development of new drugs, statups for work on AI systems for medicine and EU state government for health policy planning.
The Centre for eHealth's new strategy for 2023-2027 also includes participation in European eHealth projects, including EHDS.
Source: cowzdrowiu.pl